Youth theatre LimeLight set about the record attempt on 1 February, drawing a title – Summer Holiday – at random at 9.30am. A team of 130 performers and technicians were involved in the production, the requirements of the challenge being for actors to learn their lines, a set to be built, dances choreographed, costumes made and tickets sold, all within the schedule. The crucial prop – a cutaway double-decker bus – was loaned to the company by a local model railway company.

The final curtain came down at the Webster Memorial theatre at 6am on 2 February. The result is being officially verified by Guinness World Records.

It is not the first time LimeLight has held the title, having whipped together a full-scale production of Guys and Dolls in less than 24 hours last year. However, they retained it for less than a month, when the Essex-based company Youth Theatre Performerz nabbed it for staging the Madness musical Our House in a quickfire 22 hours at the Princes theatre in Clacton-on-Sea. LimeLight's co-owner Chris O'Mara said that the company had been "devastated" to lose the record so soon, and had plotted to seize it back.

O'Mara explained: "This is no mean feat. Last year's task was difficult enough, but with every record broken the time gets harder and harder, and there is far less room for error."

Britain can also boast the longest theatre performance, thanks to Adrian Hilton, who, spurred on by director Sam Wanamaker and Record Breakers presenter Roy Castle, single-handedly recited the entirety of Shakespeare's complete works on the site of the Globe theatre in 1987. The performance lasted 110 hours, 46 minutes, with Hilton kept awake throughout by friends. Two years later, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company.